Flying Redhead

I'm trying to book a trip to Germany in mid-April and need to leave on a Friday and return the following Saturday. I have to use the 20k miles each way AASaver so I'll have enough miles for a trip to SE Asia later this year. I can get all the way through to where I pick the flights I want, but everytime I click continue it bounces me back to the flight selection screen and says the flight is no longer available. ALL of the decent routes involve AB 7420 on 4/19. I can leave early morning 4/18 but that extra day really helps give me a fighting chance to see the 3 places I really want to see.

The system was doing the same thing yesterday and I was told that the system rolls twice a day, it's not exactly live and that there is no availability on that flight even though it keeps showing up. Okay... why is it still showing the same unavailable flights over 24 hours later??? Has anyone else ever run into this?


Assuming that that eventually corrects itself and stops teasing me, does anyone have any reasonable guesses at how likely they are to release more economy seats as we get further on? Is this a pipe dream or a fairly solid chance? I need to make a decision pretty quick... if I spend 40k on these flights then I need to buy some miles quick to be able to go business both ways to SE Asia and there's the bonus miles promo going through the 15th. I need to book the SE Asia flights as soon as I can in early January so I don't have a lot of time to wait for another mileage promotion.

Thanks for any help and advice!

Apieinthesky

Call AA web services and see what they say.

Put the available flight on hold so you don't lose it.

Flying Redhead

AA web services is who told me that the site should update twice a day. I'm just really confused as to why it's still showing those flights as available AND unavailable a full day later.

Thanks for the idea to put the available flights on hold, I've done that and am still debating if I would rather buy a ticket or shorten my trip by a day.

Apieinthesky

Did web services tell you that the award on that flight you want is not available then?

FAA1996

I have the same problem, goes on for seven days or more. See the flights I want, go through the booking process and after entering credit card number it tells me flights are no longer available. Called and was toldt he flights were in fact not available, but it's frustrating to see them come up again and again for days.

Flying Redhead

The lady who answered the gold desk phone did. She seemed very confused by what I was seeing since she sees no availability and transferred me to web services.



Thank you!! This means that at the very least I'm not crazy and I'm not the only one who has seen this sort of thing. :P

LovePrunes

Cannot wait for a reliable EXP poster to log in and merely say, condescension dripping thru the post, "you do realize there's not REALLY a gold desk, don't you?" That kind of info, by the way, is COMPLETELY unhelpful

OP: Sorry for your trouble, hope you get it worked out. Have had it happen with Hawaiian partner booking on AA.com too.

Apieinthesky

Remember that if you book the award ticket and a better option opens up, you can change to it for no additional charge (assuming O&D and type of award stay the same)

normcpa

I've been experiencing this for several weeks. It happened in the past as well. The aa.com agent told me it's an Air Berlin problem. The regular agent had no clue, but was sympathetic. I gave up and found a flight on Air Tahiti Nui (CDG-LAX; Eagle LAX-SAN) and I'm going to book that. Not as good as AB (if the flights were available) because TN is not in oneworld so I won't be able to change without penalty. Also I have to pay the booking fee. I did finally get what I wanted on the outbound (Eagle SAN to LAX, AB LAX to DUS, AB DUS to Venice) on aa.com, but only AB and BA were available, and BA is quite problematic with the fuel surcharges.

I'm a little disenchanted with AA vis-à-vis Business and First MileSAAver awards, but that seems to be the new normal. There are virtually no AA flights in the offing, other than an occasional solo seat. (We always need two.) The agent speculated that the merger may have an impact on this issue, but that doesn't seem to make much sense.

CloudCoder

I'm also having the same problem. Air Berlin business-class award flight shows available, but every time I select it the screen says that flight is no longer available. It's been going on for several days now.

Flying Redhead

LOL Isn't it always fun when that happens?

I actually did not know that, that's very helpful, thank you! I freely admit to being a newbie with using miles.


The flight causing me headaches is the Air Berlin leg. Ugh! EVERYTHING out of that region that day seems to rely on that specific flight.



Thank you all for the helpful advice and for confirming that it's not just me.

Apieinthesky

Yup. Just to clarify, say you book XXX-JFK-DUS on 4/19. You can change to XXX-JFK-DUS on 4/18, or XXX-ORD-DUS, or XXX-ORD-JFK-DUS, for no extra charge, assuming award inventory is available on the flights that you want to switch to.

I'm not sure if you know this, but you are also allowed a stopover on your North America gateway. So say you have XXX-ORD-DUS, you can spend a few days (or a few months) in that ORD layover for no additional charge.

JPG3392

Allowing a free change under these circumstances is AA's policy, but it's not true on all award programs. UA used to allow it, but has now changed its rules.

I have had a somewhat similar problem in booking a return flight (2 OW tickets) from Germany to DCA on AB/AA next July. Looking at 3 days in mid-July, flights from NUE/MUC/DRS were available for award travel only with an overnight stay somewhere along the way. I have finally booked a flight DRS-DUS-JFK; LGA-RDU-DCA, with an overnight stay in Raleigh, with the intention of changing to DRS-DUS-JFK-DCA, when and if award seats JFK-DCA open up. If necessary, I can leave DRS a day earlier or later.